eating veg sits somewhere between “avoid intercontinental flights” and “donate to effective charities” in terms of expected impact, and I’m not sure where to draw the line between “altruistic actions that seem way too costly and should be discouraged” and “altruistic actions that seem a reasonable early step in one’s EA journey and should be encouraged”
I am very confused by this statement. I feel like we’ve generally universally agreed that we don’t really encourage people as a community to take altruistic actions if we don’t really think it competes with the best alternatives that person has. Almost all altruistic interventions lie between “avoid intercontinental flights” and “donate to effective charities”, and indeed, we encourage ~0% of that range for participants of the EA community. So just based on that observation, our prior should clearly also tend towards being unopinionated on this topic.
On this principle, why would the answer here be different than our answer on whether you should locate your company in a place with higher-tax burden because it sets a good example of cooperating on global governance? Or whether to buy products that are the result of exploitative working practices? Or buy from companies with bad security practices? Or volunteer at your local homeless shelter? All of these are in effectiveness between “avoid intercontinental flights” and “donate to effective charities”, as far as I can tell (unless you think that “avoiding intercontinental flights” is somehow a much better value proposition, when it seems like one of the least cost-effective interventions I can think of, given the extremely high cost of avoiding intercontinental flights).
Yeah, the “avoid interncontinental flights” was intended as something clearly ineffective that people still do – i.e. as an example of something that seems way too costly and should be discouraged. So I fully agree with you we should encourage ~0% of that range for EAs.
My point is that avoiding animal products is substantially more cost-effective than those interventions, but I’m still not sure whether it meets the threshold for EA activity, but it might. It’s been a while since I looked into the exact numbers, but I think you can avert substantial time spent by animals on factory farms by avoiding animal products, and that seems a lot better than the other examples you gave, and perhaps better than donating to effective global health charities.
I am very confused by this statement. I feel like we’ve generally universally agreed that we don’t really encourage people as a community to take altruistic actions if we don’t really think it competes with the best alternatives that person has. Almost all altruistic interventions lie between “avoid intercontinental flights” and “donate to effective charities”, and indeed, we encourage ~0% of that range for participants of the EA community. So just based on that observation, our prior should clearly also tend towards being unopinionated on this topic.
On this principle, why would the answer here be different than our answer on whether you should locate your company in a place with higher-tax burden because it sets a good example of cooperating on global governance? Or whether to buy products that are the result of exploitative working practices? Or buy from companies with bad security practices? Or volunteer at your local homeless shelter? All of these are in effectiveness between “avoid intercontinental flights” and “donate to effective charities”, as far as I can tell (unless you think that “avoiding intercontinental flights” is somehow a much better value proposition, when it seems like one of the least cost-effective interventions I can think of, given the extremely high cost of avoiding intercontinental flights).
Yeah, the “avoid interncontinental flights” was intended as something clearly ineffective that people still do – i.e. as an example of something that seems way too costly and should be discouraged. So I fully agree with you we should encourage ~0% of that range for EAs.
My point is that avoiding animal products is substantially more cost-effective than those interventions, but I’m still not sure whether it meets the threshold for EA activity, but it might. It’s been a while since I looked into the exact numbers, but I think you can avert substantial time spent by animals on factory farms by avoiding animal products, and that seems a lot better than the other examples you gave, and perhaps better than donating to effective global health charities.